The story of Adam and Eve illustrates the psychology and theology of sin for each of us, not just for our original parents. I want to walk through the temptation narrative in chapter 3 of Genesis so you can understand your own interior struggle with sin and imperfections.

Alone

Notice first that the serpent focuses all of his attention on just one person, dividing and conquering. Isolation is the easiest tool of the devil to tear you down. If it is “not good for the man to be alone”, then isolation is the best way to keep evil down deep in your heart. Loneliness leads to moral and spiritual compromise because it is hard and hurts. The first remedy is to find people and be around them. Don’t worry if you don’t have a lot of friends or any. Just be around people. Serve others and serve often. You’ll earn their respect and the friendship will come. Just don’t let the enemy keep you alone.

Limitations

The second tactic of the serpent is to get Eve to focus on the limitations of her freedom. “Is it not true you cannot eat of ANY tree...” that’s Tony true, exactly, but it’s also not a lie either. The attention of Eve is led to the limits of her autonomy. She can indeed have any fruit except one tree’s fruit. This is the only limitation, the only thing prohibited, so the tactic of the enemy is to get you to focus on that, to rub your face in it, and maybe to become resentful because of it. If we are to have a society where people actually flourish, we don’t get to create our own morality. We don't get to define what is good or evil on an individual, private subjective judgment. We receive this divine Law from God. Yet that limitation causes us to resent the God who gives the Law, even if it is for our benefit.

Dialogue

Eve’s first failure is to engage the serpent in a conversation. The dialogue will take her immortal soul in three sentences. He lured her in and deceived her. She should have done what you and I should do every time we encounter serious temptation to sin. She should have said with anger and directness: “Go to Hell, which was prepared for you before the foundations of the earth!” The temptation is always corrupting. You have to fight it outright and in its opening stages. As Saint Teresa says, “It is easier to oppose the enemy when he is still at the front gates and harder when you have let him in the house.” Don’t dialogue with the devil. Don’t entertain temptations. Just walk away. “Flee!” as Saint Paul says in 1 Cor 6.

Rationale

The serpent then supplied something that God did not, which was the rationale behind the prohibition. "Why did God say you cannot eat it? Oh, that’s easy, because then you will be like Him and He doesn't want that." Here's the deal: God asks for trust above all things. Trust Him that He is good, that He knows you and what you’re going through, and that He loves you completely. If we trust that love then we can hold fast to His commands. The temptation comes to us with a false justification, which means a story we tell ourselves to make us feel better about doing what we know we shouldn't do. Usually, this comes through an appeal to your emotions and not your reason, reducing reason to mere rationalization. The serpent’s suggestion as to the ulterior motive of God - "He knows the day eat of it you will become like God" - serves as a deep psychological manifestation of this battle within all of us between good and evil. When we want to do wrong we first have to justify its evil as not really that evil. We have to sell it to ourselves, and we do so eagerly.

Ingratitude

Before you and I sin, we first sow doubt in our hearts and minds about God’s generosity. We question His motives behind His laws and commands. We think He’s like us, petty and jealous, imposing rules because He is going on a power trip. Eve lost her gratitude for what God had already done for her. She sees only the limitations to her freedom, and not the abundance of all the other fruit and trees that literally surround her and were made for her enjoyment. We neglect the goodness of God’s gifts to us when we sin because we think there is a better option, a sweeter deal, in the sin we are choosing and the pleasures we’re chasing. It’s just not true, so before we cross that threshold into sin we have to supply a rationale for our actions and actively doubt the generosity of our Lord towards us. We have to exclude the good things and only focus on the limitations.

Pride

Pride fills in the gap between my awareness of God’s command and my actions to the contrary. Instead of ordered self-love, wherein I love the gift that God has given me of being alive, I fall into disordered self-love, wherein I choose myself over and against all others, even to the exclusion of God. Pride doesn’t hate God but just knocks Him down a peg or two from the priorities of your life. Putting God second means you’ve put yourself first. You define Him instead of the other way around. Disobedience is rebellion against one’s Father, not just the fracturing of a law imposed upon you by a tyrant. Pride always leads to a fall because humility- its opposite virtue- allows you to see reality for what it is. Eve never said, “I hate you, God!” She just chose herself. And that’s exactly what you and I do every time we sin.

Omission

Eve ate the fruit and gave some to her husband, “who was with her,” and he ate. Though the serpent poured his energy into just Eve, isolating her, Adam was a witness to her destruction and he said and did nothing. When God created the man, He charged him to “till and keep the Garden”. Keeping it doesn’t mean landscaping but guarding. It’s the same Hebrew word that describes the sword-wielding priests who are instructed to cut down those trying to enter the Holy of Holies in the Temple. But he did nothing. He watched. He heard. And he did nothing. This is what we call the Sin of Omission instead of Commission. Eve committed the evil but Adam never intervened, spoke up, or lifted a finger. His silence was damning. So too for us, who watch and hear our brothers and sisters choosing sin and self-destruction and we say or do nothing. All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Alternate Universe

What should Adam and Eve have done, instead of falling into lockstep with the serpent?

First, Adam should have “kept” the Garden by keeping watch over it and guarding it. The serpent’s entrance is the first line of failure. Second, Eve and Adam should have found one another to withstand the serpent. Isolation is how the enemy divides and conquers so staying United is how we win. Third, Eve should have cursed the serpent to Hell with the fullness of rage and anger and not entertained the conversation. Fourth, at the very least if Eve would have put her back to the serpent and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, she would have been reminded of the good gifts that God had already given her. She would have seen the fruit trees that surrounded her and restored her sense of gratitude for God and trust in Him. Fifth, Adam should have gone on the attack. We cannot let the gates of Hell prevail. We ought to be on the offensive and take him out.

Honestly, Adam probably would have been smashed to bits at the foot of the two trees. The Hebrew word for serpent can also be translated as Dragon, which is intimidating and sinister, “a murderer from the beginning." The battle would probably have been over quickly with Adam dying violently. But even so, Adam would not have been corrupted. He would have died a hero's death, valiantly defending his bride and the integrity of God’s gifts in the Garden of Eden. Who knows, maybe God would have resurrected Adam to a new life on the spot.

Do-Over

The second Adam, Jesus Christ, would be obedient to the Father even at the cost of his own life. Where the first Adam failed, the second Adam would triumph. Jesus Christ would defeat the dragon of death by dying himself, the righteous for the unrighteous. On the night he was betrayed, he entered into the garden on the Mount of Olives and begged God to let the suffering pass him by, but only if it was the Father’s will, not his. Though his human nature recoiled from the thought of Good Friday’s humiliation and torture, he did not waiver in his obedience to the Father. His heart remained incorruptible by the sin of this world and the violence which motivates it. He embraced the tree of death so that you and I would have life anew. In the Agony in the Garden, Jesus Christ took into himself the failings of us all and in dying, he destroyed their power over us forever. Think of the radical implications of this message!

This means that Jesus does not love you in spite of your faults, as if he is pretending you have no sin. Jesus knows your failures more than you do. The cross is the testimony that Jesus knows the full weight of your sin and still loves you. This means he is not going to abandon you because you aren’t “good enough.” He makes you good enough. He racially (Latin radix, meaning root) embraces your wrongs in order to set them to rights.

Moreover, seeing the cross of Christ enables and encourages you to confront the dragons in your own life with absolute confidence, not in yourself but in him. He accomplished the victory over the devil and now he wants you to participate in his victory.